The Vatican wants to hear from people in the pews

The Vatican has asked bishops’ conferences in America and other countries to undertake a sweeping poll of the Catholic faithful asking for lay peoples’ opinions on such controversial church teachings as its opposition to contraception, condemnation of same-sex marriage and resistance to divorce.

It has asked bishops to distribute the survey “immediately and as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received,” according to a letter from Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary of the Synod of Bishops. A copy of Baldisseri’s letter was obtained by National Catholic Reporter.

Lay Catholics in pews of St. James Cathedral after election of Pope Francis last March. The Vatican now says it wants to hear from the laity on such issues as contraception, same-sex marriage and divorce. (Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)

According to the U.S.-based newspaper, it is the first time Catholicism’s headquarters hierarchy has requested such opinions from Catholics in the pews since at least the establishment of bishops’ synods after the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960’s.

The church hierarchy, especially in the United States, has a tradition of authoritarianism and is not in the habit of listening to the lay faithful.

In Seattle, for instance, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has stood aloof from a Support the Sisters movement, which has protested the Vatican crackdown against American nuns ordered under Pope Benedict XVI. Sartain heads a bishops’ panel charged with getting nuns to toe the line.

Pope Francis has urged bishops not to become obsessed and preoccupied with such issues as contraception and same-sex marriage, to the detriment of the church’s duty to preach and live the Gospels.

The poll is included in a questionnaire sent to bishops conferences around the world, in preparation for a synod on the family to be held at the Vatican next October.

The questionnaire, sent by Baldisseri, asks bishops’ conferences to quiz the faithful on topics where the views of lay Catholics converge from the hierarchy, such as church teaching prohibiting artificial contraception, the remarriage of divorced Catholics — and their ability to receive communion — and couples living together before marriage.

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain

The Catholic Bishops Conference in England and Wales has, according to the National Catholic Reporter, set up an online survey for their Catholics to respond to the Vatican’s queries.

No such survey has been set up in the United States. Nor has the Vatican been specific in asking America’s bishops what sort of consultation to undertake in their dioceses.

The Vatican appears, however, to get it. Social trends which U.S. bishops resist have, in many cases, been embraced by the laity. Surveys show, for instance, that American Catholics support marriage equality in equal or larger percentages than the population as a whole. The preparatory document states:

“Concerns which were unheard of until a few years ago have arisen today as a result of different situations, from the widespread practice of cohabitation, which does not lead to marriage . . . to same sex unions between persons.”